Sigmund Freud had many interesting theories that are still studied and looked at today although the relevance of some of these them are heavily questioned or dismissed as ridiculous. Many of those deals with his assertions about the latent fear of castration that young boys have growing up such as in the “Oedipus complex.” He explains his perceived competition between a young boy and his father for his mother’s affections by saying that a young boy sees his mother’s privates for the first time thinking that everyone is supposed to have a phallus. The boy thinks that it was the father that took it from her and from that point on he fears and tries to compete with his father in an attempt to avoid having his phallus taken away just like the mother’s was taken. This competition occurs in the form of the son vying against his father for his mother’s affections and Freud goes so far as to suggest that the son wants to have sex with her.
This theory is considered to be taboo within our current social context but as far as a competition over the mother’s affections between the father and son goes then the theory is valid and does exist within our media. I just recently saw it in the Simpsons in the episode where Bart bests Homer in tennis and becomes Marge’s doubles partner for the tournament, thusly bringing about Homer’s jealousy of his own son.
Part of the reason why Homer is seen as inadequate is seen in the above clip: he’s really bad and on top of that he embarrasses his wife. However, towards the end of the clip we see that Bart is actually pretty decent at tennis which later leads to Marge picking her son over her husband and Bart being victorious in that Oedipal struggle for his mother’s affection. That’s only a small instance in which that struggle occurs and the figurative castration of Bart would appear in the classic longest running gag in the show which is Homer choking Bart violently.
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